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The Valero refinery in Port Arthur, Tex., glows in the dusk. The state of Texas has placed a historical plaque noting the oil boom that started in 1901. This is also the end of the line for oil that would travel through the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Port Arthur, Tex. — The Valero oil refinery looms over the small streets of this blighted port city. A vast maze of pipes and vats and boilers, the refinery traces its rootsback 111 years, to just months after the historic Spindletop gusher that triggered the Texas oil rush.

Today the Spindletop well is marked by a modest flagpole in a wet field just north of here. And oil isn’t bubbling up in large enough quantities to feed the refineries in this area.

So pipelines and tankers have become critical lifelines for an industry that has shaped not only the Texas Gulf Coast but America’s entire oil-based economy.

Enter the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada, a Calgary-based pipeline giant, hopes that its Keystone XL project will take Canadian tar sands oil on a 1,700-mile journey from a tank farm in Alberta, across the Great Plains and down the spine of America, and deliver it here.

The refineries are eagerly waiting. The modernized Valero refinery can turn 310,000 barrels a day of some of the world’s worst-quality crude oil — such as the bitumen-laden mixture from Canadian oil sands — into gasoline and diesel fuel for cars and trucks. Valero, the largest U.S. oil refining company, would be one of the biggest customers of oil from the Keystone XL pipeline, buying about 150,000 barrels a day.

What happens to the Canadian oil once it arrives in this port is central to the debate over the need to build the Keystone XL. Foes of the pipeline worry that the oil will be exported, either as crude or as refined petroleum products such as diesel or gasoline. As a result, they argue, the United States would get little benefit in return for accepting the risk of a pipeline leak. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) has proposed barring exports of petroleum products made from Keystone XL oil.

Pipeline proponents say it would add to U.S. supplies and reduce dependence on unfriendly governments such as Venezuela’s or unstable regions such as the Persian Gulf. They say bringing additional crude oil onto world markets will also damp prices, which surged again this summer. Even if a portion of the oil products made from Canadian crude is exported, proponents say, that would still ease world prices while sustaining U.S. refining industry jobs.

“Valero has no intention of exporting the crude oil that comes down the Keystone XL pipeline,” said Bill Day, a Valero spokesman. “As for exporting refined products, that is an increasingly important part of Valero’s business, but that’s already happening without Keystone XL and will continue regardless.”

Exports are also a long-standing part of the global trade in refined oil products. American motorists tend to use a lot of gasoline, and not so much diesel. In Europe, it’s the reverse. So American refiners ship diesel to Europe and import gasoline from there. In addition, Mexico and many countries in Latin America lack advanced refineries, and they, too, turn to the U.S. Gulf for supplies.

“Some products get exported, but most stay in the U.S. for domestic use,” Day said. “In the first quarter of 2012, Valero exported less than 18.7 percent of the distillates it produced and less than 6.7 percent of the gasoline it produced.”

Even if Congress decided to stop the export of oil from Keystone XL, the logistics of doing that would be complicated. “Even after Keystone XL is completed and bringing crude oil to Port Arthur, the refinery will still need other sources of crude,” Day said. “We will still bring in some crude by ship, for example. That oil would all get intermingled, and the products made from it would also get intermingled.”

Refineries vie for an edge

The Valero refinery was built in 1901, five months after the discovery of oil at the small mound called Spindletop. A well drilled there erupted and in nine days produced as much oil as the entire United States had pumped in seven months. The gush of oil formed a small lake, where it sat until storage tanks were built.

In the era of plentiful U.S. oil, refiners often made more money than oil exploration firms, essentially dictating crude oil prices while luring motorists with low prices and gimmicks. But since the 1970s, oil markets have lurched back and forth, sometimes rewarding exploration with high prices and at other times favoring refiners.

The Valero refinery, sprawled across 4,000 acres here, is now one of the most advanced. In 2001, its previous owner invested $850 million in pieces of equipment known as a coker and a hydrocracker, which enabled the refinery to process heavy, sour crude — grades that are full of sulfur and harder to turn into high-quality products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. After Valero bought the refinery in 2005, the company invested hundreds of millions more in similar equipment that can break large petroleum molecules into smaller, more valuable ones.

The ability to use low-quality oil gives a refinery a big competitive advantage.

“Their refineries are well suited to take discounted oil whether it’s heavy or sour and make a profit on it,” said Brian Youngberg, an oil analyst at the investment firm Edward Jones. “I would assume they’re very anxious to get this pipeline down there.”

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, echoing other pipeline supporters, has trumpeted the notion of “North American energy independence,” with Canadian supplies freeing the United States from Middle East supplies.

But the oil market pays little attention to the origin of tankers, and oil industry executives say that the countries most likely to be edged out of the U.S. market would be Venezuela and Mexico. Motiva, a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco, recently doubled the capacity of a giant refinery next door to the Valero refinery. Corrosion problems forced the company to close down much of the plant just weeks after a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Fixing it could take months.

But once repaired, the refinery will be the nation’s biggest, and it will most likely import even more oil from Saudi Arabia than it does now, regardless of supplies from Canada. It has not yet signed a contract for oil from the Keystone XL, but if it does, the Canadian oil would probably displace Latin America supplies.

A damper on oil prices?

How would the Keystone XL pipeline affect domestic oil and gasoline prices?

U.S. prices are set in Cushing, Okla. The rundown town of abandoned buildings is surrounded by giant tank farms. The New York Mercantile Exchange uses the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil as its benchmark, and most U.S. oil prices are based on that price — one set by a mixture of supply and demand, geopolitical anxiety and capital flows from investors or “speculators.”

For decades, oil flowed to Cushing from Texas on its way to big refineries and gasoline markets in the Midwest. But in recent years, more and more oil has been flowing into Cushing, not only from Texas but also from North Dakota and Canada. There isn’t enough pipeline capacity to take that oil south to the Gulf of Mexico refineries, so a bottleneck has developed in Cushing, where firms are scrambling to build new storage tanks.

That’s depressed the price of crude oil in Cushing, opening up a gap of $10 to $20 a barrel between West Texas Intermediate and the similar Brent crude in London. For U.S. refiners, especially in the Midwest, that’s been a bonanza. They buy oil more cheaply than other parts of the world market. For American motorists, especially those in the Midwest, the Cushing glut has moderated sharp increases in gasoline prices. Gulf Coast refiners are able to buy cheap crude and sell diesel at big profit margins to customers in Europe.

Pipeline companies see a niche and are rushing to fill it. Enbridge, another Canadian pipeline company, bought a 50 percent stake in the Seaway pipeline, which used to run from Texas to Cushing, and reversed course beginning in May. Many analysts say that solving the bottleneck in Cushing could increase crude oil prices there and thus throughout the United States.

In March, President Obama made a rare visit to Cushing, where he stood in front of stacks of pipes and endorsed the southern leg of the Keystone XL as a way to ease the bottleneck — without committing himself to the northern leg. TransCanada has secured the permits it needs for the southern leg and has begun construction.

If the northern leg is approved, however, the Keystone XL would have little effect on the bottleneck at Cushing. The pipeline would carry as much oil into Cushing as it would carry out. In its first application to the Canadian National Energy Board, TransCanada estimated that leapfrogging Cushing could boost oil sands prices by $3 a barrel, providing an extra $2 billion to $3.9 billion a year to oil sands producers.

Instead, some oil experts say that Keystone XL’s new oil supplies from Canada, combined with other new pipelines from Cushing to the Gulf Coast, would effectively just move the crude oil glut from Cushing to Texas.

Texas refiners would then have greater bargaining power and could play off Canadian oil sands against Venezuela’s Orinoco crude or Mexico’s Maya crude or even higher quality “sweet” U.S. domestic crude from the Bakken or a similar formation called the Eagle Ford in Texas. Both Valero and Marathon have been operating their cokers at less than full capacity because the price of higher-quality domestic crudes was more attractive, according to Robert Johnston, director of energy and natural resources at the Eurasia Group. Those U.S. supplies will grow, Johnston notes, adding that the U.S. domestic “production boom is now driving further risks for Canadian oil exports.”

The volume of oil processed by the refineries wouldn’t change. But as U.S. gasoline consumption declines, a result of improved automobile fuel efficiency and additional biofuels, refiners would continue to export a substantial amount of products from Canadian and other petroleum supplies.

Harold Hamm, chief executive of Continental Resources and a major oil producer in North Dakota’s Bakken formation, supports the Keystone XL pipeline but worries that the new supplies will drive down prices. That might be good for the country, said Hamm, an adviser and major financial backer to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But he added, “from a selfish standpoint I [would] just as soon it not get built. We’ll be competing against it for U.S. supplies.”

For the oil industry, Port Arthur is a good location. Tankers slide up the Sabine Pass, and networks of pipelines crisscross the region. The Gulf of Mexico offers relatively easy access to Latin America, the eastern United States, the Panama Canal, Europe and Africa. Moreover, 23 percent of U.S. domestic oil is produced in the Gulf of Mexico.

Although investment is pouring into Port Arthur’s refineries, the city itself has reaped little benefit. The old downtown’s Proctor Street, once lined with stately hotels, office buildings and fancy cars, is virtually abandoned. (One exception: A bar called Club Sistahs, which has some live bands.) The blocks near the refineries have small, rundown homes. People living below the poverty line make up a quarter of the population, according to the U.S. Census. Per capita income is just two-thirds of the Texas average. Fewer than one in 10 people over age 25 have a college degree.

The town’s most famous sons have included painter Robert Rauschenberg, football coach Jimmy Johnson and singer Janis Joplin, who said of her hometown: “What’s happening never happens there.”

Luther Fields, with flecks of gray in his goatee, was a city trash collector for seven years. He hurt his back on the job and then “had some trouble with the law” — minor thefts, he said. Now he has little chance of getting a job.

“They got plenty of money from the oil, but I don’t know what they do with it,” Fields said outside the Jesse Jackson Educational Center, where a Baptist revival meeting was being held. “The oil flows in and the money flows out. But it doesn’t seem to stick around here.”

Looking up at the refinery stacks just 200 yards away, he said: “See that? That’s the dream world over there. I’m in the real world. I just want to get my life back together. I want a piece of the action.”

Port Arthur, Texas is the end of the line for oil that would travel through the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. The neighborhoods around the downtown area have few views that don't include the oil facilities looming as a backdrop.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Though Port Arthur is known as a refinery town, there's still oil drilling and exploration occurring in the area. These two roughnecks work a drilling rig north of Port Arthur.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

The Valero refinery glows in the dusk light in Port Arthur, Texas. The state of Texas has placed a historical plaque noting that this area is near where the oil boom started in 1901.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Maintenance work is constant at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Luther Fields glances toward oil refinery towers outside of a community center where he was attending a revival meeting being held within the shadow of the Valero refinery. Fields is out of work and made the observation that,

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

The Spindletop-Gladys City Museum in Beaumont re-creates the town that sprang up when the oil boom started there over 100 years ago. The area is quite proud of its oil heritage.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

The Valero refinery looms on the horizon in Port Arthur Texas.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

The World Trade Building is a shell in downtown Port Arthur.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Downtown Port Arthur is almost a ghost town. It's ironic because the nearby refineries are booming and oil prices are high.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

One of the few businesses still open in downtown Port Arthur is a bar called

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Fisherman try their luck at dusk on the Port Arthur shipping channel. The glow of various refineries can be seen in the background.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Barges in the Port Arthur ship channel wait to proceed on to the refinery areas due to tanker traffic ahead of them.

1 of 12 | Port Arthur, Texas is the end of the line for oil that would travel through the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. The neighborhoods around the downtown area have few views that don't include the oil facilities looming as a backdrop. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Young dancers in Indian dress wait for a tribal ceremony to begin as they were taking part in the Sac and Fox Nation powwow.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Children watch those taking part in a kid's rodeo at the Pow Wow held as part of the Sac and Fox Nation annual event.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

The entrance to Cushing, Okla., announces that it's the

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Nate Enness is a driller who lives near the huge number of oil storage tanks that surround Cushing, Okla. He makes a good living and feels that the Keystone XL pipeline should be completed.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Although there's lots of oil-related infrastructure surrounding Cushing, Okla., the downtown area has many shuttered storefronts. This mannequin is of a Native American woman is in the window of a downtown shop.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

More of the downtown Cushing, Okla.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

There are hundreds of oil storage tanks surrounding Cushing, Okla. One can even see them in the background at the cemetery where the remains of the family of famed Sac and Fox athlete Jim Thorpe rests.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Storage tanks even are located near rural homes near Cushing, Okla.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Area manager Keith Mossman walks the catwalk at the TransCanada pumping station in Marland, Okla., which is one of the newer stations for the Keystone pipeline. Oil comes here from Steel City, Neb., and then is sent down to the end of the line in Port Arthur, Tex.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Janice Rowe-Kurak is tribal chairman of the Iowa Tribe. She has no objections to TransCanada's pipeline plan. She standing on the porch of a century-old family farmhouse in Perkins, Okla., looking off to a tribal cemetery.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

The text on this unusual mural at the Osage Nation Museum, in Pawshuka, Okla., reads:

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

While some tribes in Oklahoma are good with the Keystone XL project and others are not, in South Dakota, TransCanada avoided the issue by simply going around the Rosebud Reservation. So though the reservation has casinos as a source of income, it does not benefit from the Keystone because the pipeline company found if too difficult to reach an agreement there.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

From Standing Bear Park in Ponca City, Okla., one can see the lights of the ConocoPhillips refinery only about 100 yards away.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

In Ponca City, Okla., there is a statue of Standing Bear, who was chief of the Ponca tribe.

Oklahoma’s history has been shaped both by Native American tribes and oil. In Ponca City, there is a statue of Standing Bear, a chief of the Ponca tribe, and behind it one can see lights of the Conoco Phillips refinery. For TransCanada, navigating tribal land and rights in building the Keystone XL pipeline could prove tricky. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Cushing, Okla. — In energy circles, the town of Cushing is well known as the hub used by New York oil traders to set the benchmark price for all U.S. crude oil. Row after row of giant oil storage tanks are lined up around a moribund downtown and a shopping strip. At the edge of town stands a sign made of white pipes declaring: “Pipeline Crossroads of the World.”

This is also where Trans­Canada’s existing Keystone pipeline ends and the southern leg of its new Keystone XL pipeline will begin.

Less well known is the fact that Cushing sits in the Sac and Fox Nation, part of a patchwork of land belonging to Oklahoma’s 38 tribes, each with sovereignty over its own affairs and land.

TransCanada’s plan to dig a trench and bury part of its $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline right through this land has unearthed a host of Native American opposition, resentments and ghosts of the past. Winning support in Indian country is one of the last hurdles for the project, which is touted as a key to North American energy security. The question is whether gaining tribal support is a courtesy, as the company puts it, or a legal obligation.

Under Chief Black Hawk, the Sac and Fox tribe, originally from the Great Lakes region, fought bloody skirmishes in the 1800s against other tribes and federal troops. Ultimately, the tribe signed a series of treaties that pushed it to Illinois, then Iowa, then Kansas and finally in the 1870s to the Indian Territory — now known as Oklahoma.

Along the way, many of its members died of smallpox and other hardships.

George Thurman, chairman of the Sac and Fox Nation and a descendent of Black Hawk, is worried that the pipeline could dig up unmarked graves or other sacred archaeological sites even on private lands.

“There are mass graves where people were buried after dying of smallpox,” Thurman said over lunch at Rudolpho’s Mexican Restaurant in a strip mall on Cushing’s East Main Street. “There could be another buried out there.”

His aide for cultural and historic preservation, Sandra Massey, added: “How many times do we have to move? Our dead are never at rest.”

Nothing is clear-cut about the web of laws regarding Native Americans.

“There is no legal obligation to work with the tribes,” said Lou Thompson, TransCanada’s top liaison with Native Americans. “We do it because we have a policy. We believe it’s a good, neighborly thing to do.” He said the pipeline “is not passing through any tribal lands.”

But many Native Americans in the United States — and their lawyers — insist that there are legal obligations under 19th-century treaties that affirmed sovereign status of Native American tribes, which do not pay state or federal taxes and which have their own governing councils and police forces.

Moreover, the more recent National Historic Preservation Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 both provide for the protection of Indian burial sites and artifacts. “When it comes to jurisdiction, it’s a tough question to answer,” said Jennifer Baker, a Colorado-based lawyer who has worked closely with South Dakota tribes. “History has developed so that legal truths get overshadowed by factual realities, and judges tend to mold the law to reflect factual realities.”

Meeting with tribal leaders

A key reality is this: Even after Trans-Canada has secured the right to build from federal and state officials, it still could run into a hitch on — or near — tribal land.

TransCanada is trying to hammer out issues with Oklahoma and Texas tribes without a fight, so it can get on with digging. The company met with tribal leaders on July 11 at the Caddo Nation headquarters in Binger, Okla., and again on Aug. 3 at the Choctaw Inn, a hotel in Durant near the Choctaw tribe’s headquarters and one of its seven casinos. Another meeting is set for Tulsa.

TransCanada has flown some tribal leaders to Calgary to tour the company’s operations center where banks of computers monitor thousands of points along existing pipelines. And it has trained members of the Alabama ­Coushatta tribe from south Texas to act as monitors during construction in case Indian remains or artifacts turn up on the tribe’s stretch of the pipeline.

“We walk the entire pipeline route and identify sites and alter the route of our pipeline to avoid those sites,” said Thompson of TransCanada.

He said that the company has also asked the tribes to conduct their own studies of sensitive sites. “Sometimes there are areas very significant to the tribes that don’t bear any physical evidence,” Thompson said. “It might be used to hold ceremonies, but if you walked there you wouldn’t see any evidence.” Thompson’s efforts have new impetus. In July, TransCanada received the permits it needs to build the Keystone XL’s southern leg, which will run from Cushing to Port Arthur, Tex., and the company already has started work.

Yet some of the Native Americans who attended the meetings believe the company is moving too fast. Massey said, “They need to learn whose land is where.” Moreover, she added, monitors from one tribe won’t know the traditions and desires of other tribes.

While Thompson said tribes have looked at programs for construction work, Massey said the plans still lack input from many tribal leaders. “It seems like TransCanada really wants to work with us,” she said dryly. “We’ll see.”

Massey also worries about leaks. In the 1960s, saltwater flooding resulting from Tenneco’s failure to properly plug abandoned wells contaminated Sac and Fox drinking water and destroyed land and pecan groves. Three federal agencies joined the tribe in a lawsuit and the pipeline company El Paso (which bought Tenneco) agreed in 1997 to dig wells, provide potable water and plant trees. The wells still provide water to the tribe.

In other states, TransCanada’s route for the Keystone XL pipeline neatly avoids Native American lands.

In South Dakota, TransCanada threaded its way in between the seven major reservations that cover about 16 percent of the state. The Keystone XL would enter the northwest corner of South Dakota from Montana then move diagonally. It would run southwest of the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation and north of the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglalla Lakota. It would narrowly miss the Rosebud Indian Reservation, and travel south of the Crow Creek and Lower Brule.

“It’s not necessarily by design,” Russ Girling, TransCanada’s chief executive, said in an interview. “When you build a pipeline . . . the least environmental disturbance is a straight line from A to B.”

In Oklahoma, however, where the U.S. government drove tribes from the East Coast and all over the Western frontier, it is difficult to sidestep Indian burial or archaeological sites or to circumvent the patchwork jurisdiction of tribal governments. More than a century ago, the federal government broke up tribal lands into allotments, which Indian individuals could later sell. The goal was to shrink tribal areas, make way for a land rush by whites and prepare for Oklahoma statehood.

TransCanada has sought to stick to privately owned plots. But a wide layer of sovereign tribal authority remains and burial sites could exist on land no longer owned by tribal members.

Near the giant oil tank farms of Cushing lies a cemetery that holds the family of legendary Olympian Jim Thorpe, a Sac and Fox member whose remains the tribe is trying to repatriate from Pennsylvania. About 20 minutes down the road, Iowa tribal chairman Janice Rowe-Kurak bows her head and folds her hands as she pays her respects before a small cemetery hidden behind trees at a cousin’s ramshackle house.

Many tribal leaders in Oklahoma, including Kurak, have no objection to Trans­Canada’s pipeline plan.

TransCanada says that there will be three monitors and one tribal liaison on every segment of pipeline under construction. “There’s always the possibility that we are confronted with an unanticipated discovery that requires mitigation,” Thompson said. “Our tribal monitors’ main responsibility is to help us identify those unanticipated discoveries. They are rare, but they do occur.”

“All we know is that it’s coming through our tribal jurisdiction,” Thurman said. “They say they will stop digging if they hit something, but there is no guarantee that they are going to stop.”

If they don’t stop, the tribes could go to federal court or ask the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs to intervene.

After the Oklahoma tribal leaders’ first meeting with Thompson, Massey sat on the edge of the annual Sac and Fox powwow, part ceremony and part country fair featuring jumbo corn dogs, frozen chocolate-dipped cheesecake and fish tacos. Men in feathered regalia and women in long patterned skirts and necklaces danced in a circle around a dozen traditional drummers. Others watched from folding chairs and bleachers as an announcer over a microphone urged people to participate.

“Some things are sensitive to us. If they want to go through a grave, the ground around it may be sacred, too,” Massey said, shaking her head. “We’re all wary. We don’t trust anybody.”

‘Sacred site’

Other tribes are also worried about the pipeline excavation. In February, Robert Cast, the historic-preservation officer of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, with homelands in four states, wrote to the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation warning of “imminent and irreparable damage” to an archeological site in Lamar County, Tex.

It said that the “sacred site,” which was first excavated by archaeologists in 1931, “contains burials and specific artifacts of ceremonial use along with iconographic images on artifacts that are of utmost importance to the history of the Caddo people.”

TransCanada’s Thompson said that the pipeline route in that location has been moved and that the Caddo council approved a resolution supporting the project. Cast, who is still marking up pipeline maps so that TransCanada can avoid sensitive areas, said “it’s not so much that we’re in support of the pipeline, but we’re in support of working together to make sure our interests are looked after.”

The route has inadvertent historical echoes, too. From northern Nebraska through Kansas, it is almost identical to what is known as the trail of tears for the Ponca Tribe. The Poncas, who in the 19th century did almost everything the federal government asked including attending church and farming, were still forced to move to Oklahoma.

A history of broken promises, and treaties, has fueled opposition, especially in South Dakota. Last October, a group of Indians were ejected from a speech by President Obama after shouting that the president should respect the tribes and stop the pipeline. On Feb. 18, the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council demanded that Obama and Congress prevent construction of the Keystone pipeline

“The Great Sioux Nation hereby directs President Barack Obama and the United States Congress to honor the promises of the United States made through the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties by prohibiting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline and any future projects from entering and destroying our land without our consent,” said a resolution approved by all seven delegations.

The Fort Laramie treaties ceded all of South Dakota west of the Missouri River to the Lakota tribes, or Sioux. While legislation has reduced the size of that reservation, the treaties were never revoked. Baker, the lawyer, says they should still be considered in force.

Moreover, while the pipeline doesn’t cross current reservation boundaries in South Dakota, it runs across rivers and water pipelines that do.

Even under congressional legislation, a process of consultation is required for all federal agencies. But Cast said that the State Department, which is weighing the Keystone XL cross-border permit, told tribes to voice concerns at open meetings with other citizens.

“The State Department has its own process talking about government-to-government talks and the sovereignty of tribes, but they don’t really believe that,” Cast said. “Our main issues are with the federal agencies. I think they abandoned the tribes.”

Baker said: “The consultation process is really broken. Tribal interests are rarely able to be brought forward properly, and when they are they are rarely listened to.”

Mineral rights

Native Americans have had success melding their interests with business and oil development. The Sac and Fox, like many other tribes, rely heavily on casinos for income. The tribe said in a May newsletter that it received two-thirds of its revenue from its casinos.

The oil and gas industry is a familiar presence, too. Though Oklahoma was chosen as Indian Territory in part because it was thought to be worth little, the state turned out to hold substantial oil and natural gas reserves. That led to further reductions in Indian land holdings while derricks and small boomtowns sprung up. Throughout Indian areas today, old pipelines, some dating to the 1930s, can be seen alongside gently seesawing pump jacks, and the old boomtowns remain largely deserted.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Interior Department has acted as Indians’ trustee for these resources, though Native Americans have complained that it has often done a poor job of guarding their interests. The Osage tribe, which in 1906 was savvy enough to retain mineral rights when private allotments were carved out in Osage County, filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department for mismanaging those mineral rights; last October, the government settled for $380 million.

When it comes to the Keystone XL pipeline, observers say there is an element of tribal politics in the opposition. During the 2008 campaign, the Crow received attention for making Obama an honorary member, bestowing him with the name “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land.”

Now, some believe that Sac and Fox leader Thurman feels slighted by Obama, who initially failed to invite him to the March speech the president delivered in Cushing. This was a special affront because Cushing is part of the Sac and Fox Nation. At that event, Obama announced his support for the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Thurman only heard about the visit from Kurak, who is a friend. Kurak had been invited because she caught Obama’s attention at a meeting in Washington.

Kurak, the Iowa Nation chairman, sympathizes with Thurman. She said, “All we’re asking for is respect, respect for us as a people.”

Baker, the lawyer, who comes from Oklahoma, stresses that opposition is rooted in Native American belief.

“Above all the land is sacred,” she said. “It’s not just a mantra. People really do see this as sacred land. It really causes a lot of people a lot of pain, particularly the elders. They recognize the damage this has the potential for.”

TransCanada has submitted a second revision of the Nebraska portion of the route for its controversial Keystone XL pipeline, seeking to mollify critics fearful of the oil pipeline’s potential impact on ecologically sensitive terrain and waterways.

The company gave its redrawn route to the state Department of Environmental Quality, moving two segments of the line further east and moving another segment slightly to the west. The changes add 20 miles to the route, bringing the Nebraska portion to 275 miles, TransCanada said.

The Keystone XL pipeline at one point was going to run through the sensitive Sand Hills areas near Valentine, Neb. The pipeline was rerouted to the east, so it will not pass through this area at the Minnechaduza Creek. TransCanada has announced that it will change the Nebraska route again.

Russ Girling, chief executive of the Calgary-based firm, said the company had “refined” its proposed route “based on extensive feedback from Nebraskans and reflects our shared desire to minimize the disturbance of land and sensitive resources in the state.”

However, Jane Kleeb, Nebraska’s leading activist against the Keystone XL route, said in an e-mail that “the new route still risks our land, water and property rights. The new route still crosses high water tables, sandy soil which leads to higher vulnerability of contamination and still crosses the Ogallala Aquifer, the lifeblood of Nebraska’s economy.”

Finding an acceptable route through Nebraska is a critical part of TransCanada’s effort to win approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Hardisty in the Canadian province of Alberta to Port Arthur, Tex. The southern leg of the project, starting in Cushing, Okla., has won approval already and construction on that leg has begun. The fate of the northern leg, ending in Steele City, Neb., still hangs in the balance.

Early this year President Obama rejected TransCanada’s initial proposal because he said Congress had imposed a deadline that did not leave enough time to weigh the pipeline proposal, especially the portion that ran through Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills and over parts of the vast Ogallala aquifer that provides drinking and irrigation water in several Great Plains states.

TransCanada now must present its plan to Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality, which will give its findings to Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman. He will approve or deny the plan, which will then go to the State Department of its review.

In its revised filing to the Nebraska DEQ, TransCanada said it would move the Keystone XL route to avoid areas “that exhibit similar characteristics to the Sandhills, even though they are not identified this way in existing literature or agency databases.” It said the areas to be avoided have “features similar to sand dunes and areas with sandy, erodible soils, with a thin organic layer of topsoil. The new re-route minimizes impact on these features.”

In another segment of the line, TransCanada now proposes to put its pipeline east of the town of Clarks to avoid areas where the groundwater is shallow and runs toward the town’s water supply.

In the third altered segment, TransCanada also redrew the route to avoid a water well head protection area.

“Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline built in America,” Girling said in a statement, adding that “TransCanada shares the goal of protecting key water and natural resources with Nebraskans.”

But Kleeb said, “We will not allow middle American to be the middle man for a foreign tar sands pipeline wanting to export their extreme form of energy to the highest bidder.”

Seven opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline chained themselves to a truck carrying pipe for the project until police came and arrested them. To get some of them loose, one of the truck’s bumpers had to be removed, according to activists there. Others attached themselves to the truck axle.

The demonstration in Livingston, Tex., was organized by a group called the Tar Sands Blockade, which on its Web site declared victory — for a day.

“Again, we witness the power of bringing together those battling corporate eminent domain abuse and those fighting to defend our natural commons from the unconscionable harm of surface mining and catastrophic climate change,” the group said. “Every day of delay is a victory.”

The group said that last week’s ruling by a judge in Lamar County, Tex., that TransCanada could use eminent domain to force landowners to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to cross their land left foes of the line little choice but to resort to civil disobedience. Four of the demonstrators — including a retired minister, a small businessman, a farmer and a woman who simply identified herself as “a grandmother” — posted videos explaining their position before attaching themselves to the truck.

“They are not going to endanger themselves or other people, but they will make their point consistently and effectively,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Texas Public Citizen.